


waves are crashing over me

by nickofhearts



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, POV Second Person, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 19:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10906152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickofhearts/pseuds/nickofhearts
Summary: Noctis' mother was a selkie.





	1. as i cross the raging sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamingcicadas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingcicadas/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis finds the meaning of _home_.

You’ve always known you were different. You never felt right in your own skin, like there was something _missing,_ some sense that would paint the world in colour like the rest of the people saw it, instead of the dull greyness it always seemed to be for you.

The only thing that ever felt _right_ was sliding into the water for a bath. You wanted to stay beneath the surface forever.

-

Cor comes to you in Leide, and he says: “Your father’s dead.”

He says, “this is your mother’s skin,” unraveling a shimmering iridescent thing that flows like liquid through his hands.

You stare, transfixed.

It feels warm in your hands, almost like it’s _alive,_ and it whispers to you in your mother’s voice. _Put me on and swim beneath the waves._

You _do,_ and you finally understand.

-

Your mother was a selkie, but you don’t need Cor to tell you that when you feel it in your _blood._ You slip into the water of the lake, and it welcomes you home.

-

Someone’s screaming your name, but that’s your _human_ name, and you answer to it no longer. The waters whispered to you of her secrets, and you know now it was the humans that stole you away, kept your mother from her home until she wasted away of missing it.

It’s not until they’re holding you down, Cor’s knife like a hot iron cutting your skin away, that you realize the hardest lesson your mother ever learned.

Humans are cruel, _vicious,_ creatures, and they’ll never let you go.

-

 _Cor,_ you whisper, stroking your hands lightly through his hair. _Give me back my skin._

-

It’s not a _conscious_ thought, but there’s a squirming wriggling thing in the waters above while you’re swimming through the depths, and you surge up and snap your powerful new jaws around it before it even sees you coming.

It tastes _so good,_ sweeter than the most decadent dessert you’ve ever tasted, more tender than the choicest cut of meat from any animal you’ve ever devoured.

It’s not until your _friends_ are all staring at you in horror, Cor with his sword to your throat, that you understand.

This is the taste of _human_ flesh.


	2. i will not drown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cor loses his way.

Regis had always believed that raising Noctis as a human—with no knowledge of his _other_ heritage—would make him one. Cor had had his doubts, but he kept them to himself. Regis was his king, after all, and Cor was practiced at following orders, even when he didn't agree with them.

-

Cor saw it the moment Noctis touched the skin. It was the same look Aulea had gotten whenever her gaze had wandered to the sea. That same unearthly mix of longing and wonder, but the sea had been lost to Aulea when Regis had taken her skin. Noctis ran for the water now, hollering with joy, while his friends looked after him with varying degrees of anxiety and disbelief. 

"We will do what's necessary for the kingdom," Cor told them, and together, they waited for their prince to resurface.

-

Noctis' eyes were a pure black, depthless as the very bottom of the seas, and his ears had turned to fins, new slits on his neck for his gils. The soft human skin of his face melted away to scales towards the sides, a shimmering pattern of them that went down his back. 

" _Noctis,_ " Cor called, but Noctis was watching the shores with an expression that Cor didn't like at all.

" _Now!_ " Cor ordered instead, and Noctis' friends held him still for it while Cor got out his knife.

It wasn't a _pleasant_ task, cutting the skin off a selkie's back, but it had to be done if they were to keep the prince from losing himself completely to the call of the ocean's song, a far more powerful lure than any attachment Regis had hoped his son would form in his twenty years of life on land. Cor still dreamed at times of the terrible screams Aulea had made when Regis had cut her away from her connection to the sea, and though Noctis had only just awakened to this other power of his blood, his screams were no better.

-

" _Noct?_ " his friends asked uncertainly, as Noctis staggered to his feet. His teeth were bared, a mouthful of thin sharp knives, his eyes fixed on Cor's bloody hands holding his skin.

"Noct, we're _sorry,_ but Cor said it was the only way!"

Cor watched his gaze flicker, like Noctis had _forgotten who they were,_ but then the mask was firmly back in place. Noctis' scales melted away, and his smile was the same one he'd worn only a few hours ago when he'd been laughing at Prompto's jokes, but Cor could tell that the expression now was empty of any warmth that had been present then.

"Wow, Cor, you got any _other_ secrets for me?" Noctis asked him, and though Noctis and his friends all laughed, Cor knew it was no joke.

-

 _Cor,_ Noctis purred, petting his hair as Cor snapped awake in the dead of the night. _Give me back my skin._

"I cannot," Cor told him, even as Noctis' fingernails turned sharp enough to cut his throat wide open.

 _I promise to let you live, Cor,_ Noctis murmured, leaning in close so Cor could watch as blackness spilled into his eyes like ink, until there was no light left. _That's more than you did for my mother._

"Noctis, remember yourself," Cor told him, his voice as even as his blade. "You are the _Prince_ of Lucis."

Noctis leaned in the rest of the way and kissed him, his teeth drawing pinpricks of blood from Cor's lips and tongue. _Please, Cor,_ Noctis begged, moaning, and Cor felt heat curl in his gut no matter that there was no part of him that wanted this. _I need my skin._

Cor shook his head, refusing, and he thought for a long moment that Noctis was going to cut his throat right there, but then the claws melted back away.

 _Okay, Cor._ Noctis said, still in that unearthly lilting voice, echoing like whalesong. _You keep my skin, but every life that meets its ends by my hands will be on_ you.

-

Cor woke up the next night, and Noctis was missing from the tent.

He ran out with his sword drawn, searching, searching, and that was when he heard the scream, piercing through the darkness.

"Noctis!" Cor yelled, running as fast as his legs would take him.

There was a girl sobbing at the edge of the lake, naked but for the scarf that was tied in her hair. Cor didn't understand the picture until he saw the dark shape huddled further down the shore, when he recognized the shape as _Noctis,_ bent over a still form on the ground, _tearing pieces off it and eating them._

"Go _home,_ " he told the girl, who was still sobbing uncontrollably.

She seemed about to turn and obey, but that was when Noctis looked up. His face was a mess of blood, stringy sinew caught on his teeth, but the girl seemed to see something else, watching him captivated, no longer crying. 

"Aaron?" she whispered, eyes shining.

Cor reached out for her arm, but he was too slow. She'd already taken off at a dead run, throwing her arms around Noctis' neck when she reached him.

" _No,_ " Cor whispered, but it was only to himself. 

Noctis' teeth sank into her neck, and there was no scream when he tore it open, blood drenching him like a second skin, to replace the one Cor had taken.

Cor had seen more horrors in the war than he'd ever known possible, things no man should ever have to bear witness to, but he'd never lost his resolve even in the darkest hours of those days. He stumbled towards the water line now, and threw up everything he could.

"That's _gross,_ Cor," Noctis told him placidly, patting him delicately on the back. Cor hadn't even heard Noctis come up behind him. "People _live_ in there, you know."

When Cor stripped out of his jacket back at camp, trying to forget the sight of Noctis tearing meat from bone like it was nothing more than an over-raw steak, he saw the perfect imprint of a bloody handprint on the fabric, and had to throw up once more.

-

Cor hadn't slept in a week, afraid of what he'd wake up to, of what _else_ Noctis might do.

He clutched the skin to himself, hidden under his jacket, feeling like he'd gone mad.

 _How did you live twenty years like this?_ Cor wondered of Regis. _How did you_ sleep _with that thing in your bed?_

The thing was, Cor _had_ almost believed it, for a time. That perhaps Noctis hadn't inherited his mother's heritage, had been nothing but the adorable human child he'd always appeared to be. He'd certainly shown no signs of it when he was younger, laughing and giggling as Regis picked him up and spun him around in the air, chasing after bunnies in the gardens and falling asleep stretched out in the afternoon sun like a particularly lazy cat.

It'd only been moments like Noctis refusing to get out of a bath, his whole self submerged for a longer time than was possible for any _person,_ that they all remembered the late queen's truest self.

"That woman is no woman, but a _monster,_ " Cid had told Regis at the end of their journey, and those had been the last words Regis had traded with one of his closest friends.

Cor thought he might understand it a smallest bit now, the way Noctis never took his eyes off him even when he was talking and laughing with his friends. Always watching, always waiting. It was like Cor stood at the very center of the world, that Noctis would lay waste to every single inch of it to have back what was _his._ But so long as Cor held dominion over the silken wondrous thing in his arms, warm and precious, he had power over the most dangerous thing in all the lands.

 _Cor,_ Noctis whispered at night, pressed naked and wet against him from his swim. _Do you love me? Is that why you won't give it back?_

"Yes," Cor answered him. " _Yes._ "


	3. the storms are passing through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ardyn gets his hands on Noct's skin.

"Oh?" Ardyn asked, expression a mask of pleasantness as he dragged his fingers down the shimmery almost _wet_ -looking thing he was holding in his hands, "what's this?", and Cor felt the pit drop out of his stomach when he grabbed for it around his waist and realized _he no longer had Noct's skin._

Noct shuddered, eyes going half-lidded at the touch. "That's _mine_."

"Hmmm," Ardyn remarked. "Is it? I do believe it's _mine_ now, Noctis. Isn't that how this works? You have to do as _I_ say whilst I hold this in my hands."

Noct screamed, changing before their very eyes, from the gentle caring prince into the vicious monster that made _meals_ of the people that should have been his subjects—the only imperfection in his sleek killer form the raw red wound on his back where Cor had cut his skin from him—as he tried to tear it from Ardyn's hands, but Ardyn was too fast.

"Oh, _Noctis,_ " he said, drawing the skin through his fingers again in a soft sensuous touch, and Noct visibly shivered in his boots. "You _may_ have this back, but not until I'm done with it."

" _What—_ " Noct snarled, showing all his teeth—" _do you want?_ "

Ardyn only smiled in answer.


End file.
